The Faults In Our Foundation
by wikiaddicted723
Summary: It's gotta be some form of metaphor, she thinks, some overcomplicated universal message or whatever, saying "hey, this is exactly how ******* disgusting you are! Here, have a taste." Pre-AGT


**A/N: **This one is part of a pre- All Good Things series of fics that I have started with Wasted Years, though this particular oneshot comes well before that one in the chronology of things. Hence the year.

* * *

_(1993)_

Funny how your own vomit can taste so foul.

It's gotta be some form of metaphor, she thinks, some overcomplicated universal message or whatever, saying "hey, this is exactly how fucking disgusting you are! Here, have a taste." Olivia coughs, staring at the little puddle on the sidewalk with detachment, shivering in seventy-degree weather under the small radius of illuminated space created by the lamp post a couple of feet away.

Seduce the man, use his vices against him, trick him into thinking you're just one more docile whore. Above all, and no matter the cost, get the info. Get the info. That had been the mission. Her target: a middle aged man, caucasian, relatively short. More importantly, a member of the INtREPUS' board of directors, head of their R&R department and privy to developments that had Massive Dynamic's interest piqued the same way a dog's appetite whets at the sight of a treat, reported to be respectable and well educated, with a criminal record clean as snow. Also, a textbook pedophile.

It was supposed to be simple, she's been trained and retrained for this since she was ten, after all. A cakewalk.

Well, it fucking wasn't.

(She's going into shock, rational thought whispers. She barely hears it over the sound of her mind screaming).

* * *

By the time Olivia drags herself through the door, Peter has pulled most of his hair out of his head (he thinks) and cut his left palm open on the shards of a glass he crushed against the white, white walls, running on the anger that creeps around the room, expanding and retracting like a living, breathing, growing thing he can't control. There's a Gordian knot in his gut and all he wants is flesh to beat until there's blood on his hands and death at his feet. Like the goddamned animal he is.

He knows it isn't all his own, he's seen Nick's face go from pale to worse, the line of his jaw so tight it must hurt to speak, his bony hands in white-knuckled fists. Nick's a reverse empath, his emotions virulent when overwhelmed, and Peter may not be many things other than a fucked-up circus freak but he's always been more than just good at math. The very air around him shimmers, vibrates, and Peter wonders if he's about to die a fire-y death (except that's all Olivia and not at all Nick, but sometimes they're so alike it takes a while to be reminded of that fact) or spill his guts on their living room's floor — Nina would probably castrate him with the robo-arm just for that.

The sound of her key turning the lock on the door and the clamoring of her mind breaks their feedback loop with an almost audible snap, and the sheer whiplash makes him stumble on his feet, falter mid-step where he's been pacing for the last hour and a half. They both freeze in place, Nick and him, and they wait.

Her face is shuttered, her posture rigid yet wobbly all at once as she steps out of her shoes, by the door, and she won't meet their eyes. Her head's a mess of knotted hair, her skin sweaty, clothes, most of them in colorful tones he's never seen her wearing before, thrown on in a rush. Her hand slaps something on the table beside her, and the crystal rings. A flash-drive by the looks of it. She completed the mission, at least (not that he cares one way or the other as long as she's still breathing by the end of it — her being alright has long been out of the question), which means repercussions from higher up are one less thing to worry about.

Peter watches her move to the kitchen, her steps silent as ever, her limbs wooden, awkward, her eyes sightless yet leading. There's a void where her mind should be, at the very back of his own, like part of his brain has been anesthetized and removed, leaving behind a crumbling palace of echoes, like something swept her out of the way, left him bereft and clean of her. This has never happened before and, whatever it is, it scares the shit out of him. He sees Nick twitch out the corner of his eye, his head following her motion, gaze glued to her back. His face is contorted, almost grotesque, and Peter can read every fucking thing going through his head like the words on a book. Nick's never had much of a poker face, feels too much to ever manage to school his features enough to show the world no more than whatever he wants. Instead, he's transparent. And the things he's showing right now make Peter want to both drive his fist through the wall and weep like he's still eight and the sight of needles is scary as hell.

He knows how Nick feels, overwhelmed with impotence himself, having the will to do something but lacking the means to accomplish it. There's nothing they can do, here and now, not a thing except stand by and hover like wide-eyed acolytes of a broken Oracle who's drowned herself in her riddles, gone to war with fate and tied the noose of tragedy tight around her neck. Oh, and please, don't forget to kick the chair when you leave, for fuck's sake.

Cabinets open, cabinets close, and it's all too silent to not be announcing a storm. They both approach, their steps clear, audible thumps on the dark wooden boards of the floor, announcing their presence in bold and bright strokes. She doesn't turn, pours the bourbon they're not supposed to know is stashed at the back of the third, topmost cabinet on the right into a blue-tinted glass, in generous measure, and drinks. And drinks.

Olivia sets the glass back down with a clink, pushing it away, and she shudders.

The sight breaks his resolve, jump-starts all his instincts. Peter approaches, ignoring Nick's silent warning at his side, and places a light hand on the small of her back. A friendly gesture, made to offer comfort, to tell her "I'm here," and, "you're not alone," through one simple touch. He's done it before, plenty of times, and it's worked, so far. She's never objected to having his hands on her skin. Not until now.

She flinches, tenses and turns, her jaw set, "Don't touch me," she says, voice so low, so damaged and rough it's almost a growl, and it's a plea and a command and a wish all in one, and it's _angry. _Peter steps back, blue eyes open wide, spelling helpless, bewildered, and watches her retreat with Jack Daniel's in hand.

* * *

"Don't, man," Nick warns, his voice breaking, grabbing Peter's arm to pull him back from following Olivia into her room and making an even bigger mess out of this, "leave her alone for a little."

It hurts him to say it, hurts him to recognize the fact that she's wishing fervently to be left the fuck alone in her head, to be independent of them. He knows Peter wants only to help, to make her feel better, to see her smile and laugh like any girl should at her age, and though he does think it would help, in the long run, what he wants to avoid is to make her self conscious. At the heart of the matter lies the fact that Olivia believes, and has always believed, that she is to blame for every single catastrophe that litters the road they've all followed. To blame for the fires, for the deaths and the experiments, and the pain and what she considers to be her ruining of both their lives, Peter's and his. At the heart of the matter lies the fact that Olivia believes she's done something wrong, today, and she blames herself. It's that and the anger and the nausea and the nothingness around it, and Nick knows she's gone into some sort of shock, and he doesn't want to imagine what follows from this.

Peter looks back at him, forlorn and frustrated, and Nick feels, through the contact of his hand on his arm, everything Peter has tried so hard to keep quiet, contained and out of sight. They both love Olivia, this Nick has always be sure of. They love her in different ways, ways suited to the people they are, to the ways she'll let them, always simply and quietly. But this, this thing he's feeling Peter hold back so hard it'll break him, this is something else entirely. And fuck, but Nick's not sure he's capable of that amount of devotion. Blind faith, yes, any day (he'd follow her down every level of hell), but not that.

Nick's eyes widen, and Peter gives him back a fractured smile, because Peter's a genius and is routinely given too little credit and of course he knows that Nick knows, and of course he's been reading every single thing on his face for fuck knows how long.

Neither of them knows what actually happened, though, to make her feel like this. Especially knowing that she's here, alive, and the mission was apparently successful. Nick's got ideas, a suspicion so fucking infuriating he's sure he's been leaking everywhere, and he hopes it's just that because if it's fact then someone's in for a painful exit out of this theatre showing the movie of life.

* * *

Everything about her is a weapon. A well oiled pistol, a knife sharpened, and sharpened, and sharpened, stroked repeatedly against the whetstone, back and forth and up and down, up and down, up and down till the edge is but a whisper, a regime-toppling lie. She's meant to end lives, perhaps even worlds. She's been crafted by expert hands, arrogant hands, cruel hands.

Where there's an ending there are beginnings but Olivia's lost track of hers, left them abandoned sometime, someplace. She doesn't remember anything else, can't be sure there ever _was _anything other than this.

Here's the catch: Olivia never forgets, can't forget.

Remembers every experiment, every failure and death. Every bit of stolen pleasure, and pain and the blood on her hands, dripping down the drain like waste, like her life. It's all etched in the back of her skull, engraved on her bones like they're stone, meant to last eons, meant to be all that remains when she's little more than ashes and a memory lost to the wind, a name without records. And it's divine justice — whatever that is — or the universe making a joke, could very fucking well be both.

And Jack's supposed to _make_ her forget, to take the screaming away, to make her hands steady again and keep the urge to vomit her guts well restrained (and isn't that all kinds of ridiculous?), but Jack's already half gone with a blaze down her throat and her tongue has gone numb from the burn, and all she can feel are alien hands, groping and bruising and holding her down (and the shackles that bind her and make her defenseless she's put on on her own).

She thought the shower would help, that scalding her flesh would drive the itching away, that the pain of scrubbing skin raw might stop her from feeling like she's stuck in a suit two sizes too small, two sizes too tight. There's a tennis ball lodged in the back of her throat, covered in shit and maybe some blood, with a cherry on top. She was wrong.

Everything about her is a weapon. She's been taught how to use it, how to distill all the weakness and gather her strengths, like making vodka from grain. She's been taught to find profit, to better herself, to make her skin armor that'll bend but not break.

All her lessons she's learned, all the rules she's taken to heart, so, what did she do so wrong and why the fuck does it hurt like she's been gutted and skinned alive both?

Why does she feel so small?

* * *

They've been sitting here for hours.

Peter knows this from the loud, constant tick-tock of the kitchen clock, the only sound in the house since the shower shut off. He knows this because at some point Nick slid over to his side —on the floor, by the closed red oak door — and he pretended not to shake so he could offer some measure of comfort. He knows this because his ass is numb and his toes tingle and Nick's teeth started chattering some time ago, in time with the chill running laps up and down his spine, in time with the feeling of nightmarish dread creeping into the back of their minds, coming from behind the door they so guard. Here they are, shoulder to shoulder in the most literal sense, and Peter is usually all for letting her be and doing things on her terms, but he's seen her broken tonight, seen her shaking and miserable without knowing the cause, and he's had _enough_.

"Just don't light me on fire, woman," he mutters under his breath, and he stands, ignoring the stiffness of his calves and the soft 'pop' of his back as he straightens to his full height. The door knob is silent in turning, but the door does creak slightly as he steps through the threshold, and Peter thinks as he cringes that he needs to remember to oil the hinges sometime. Waking her up just now is not part of his plans. Nick follows behind, silent.

She's burrowed into the mattress, under the red-dotted quilt, her hair, still damp and leaving wet trails, spread on her pillow like a Jackson Pollock mess. She's curled on her side, her limbs held together so tight he fears something might snap, and she shudders. And she looks so young, so fragile and scared that it's hard to remember that this girl right there can kick his ass twenty ways without breaking a sweat.

Nick steps forward, climbs on the bed facing her, and Olivia startles awake, breathing harsh.

"Shh, it's alright," Nick whispers, a hand on her arm, no doubt working his particular charm on her mind, "Olive, it's alright, just us, see? It's Peter and Nick, it's just us."

It seems like it works, whatever Nick's done, because he feels more than sees her shoulders go slack and her sudden panic recede. She's awake. More awake, more herself than she's been since she walked through the door, what he estimates was four hours ago.

"Nick," she sighs, just a breath, and her voice is hoarse and much too weak for Peter to like, "Nick, I-I couldn't stop it, I should have stopped it but I couldn't, I couldn't fail — I couldn't ruin it, I needed that info. Nick, I couldn't stop it, I couldn't stop it," and then she's crying, sobbing outright, her shoulders shaking inside Nick's arms. Nick hugs her tight and shoots him a look that's screaming _Do Something! _Because he has no fucking clue how to react to the strongest person they know falling apart quite like that, and Peter shakes himself from his trance.

"Take your socks off," he orders, getting rid of his own, discarding the long sleeved sweatshirt on him like it's made of ants and sliding beneath the quilts to mold himself to her back.

"What?"

"Take. Your socks. Off," he repeats, "rub her calves, her feet. Trust me, it helps." Anything helps. The more skin they manage to press against hers the stronger the bond, the easier it is for her to get lost somewhere that's not the level of hell currently residing in the space of her head that belongs to no one but her. He used to do this, he always used to do this, when they were no more than four feet tall and couldn't spell "narcosis" quite right. Nick would be taken away for long periods of time, back when he had a mother and a dog and a home, and Olivia would be left alone through the night to dread the dark and the missing spot on the back of her mind that said _Lane_ in permanent black. That's how he learned to pick locks and break in through windows and fire escapes, at the ripe old age of nine going on ten.

He gets his left arm under her neck, his hand cradling the top of her head under the pillow, his chest tight to her back, chin digging into the skin left bare by her dark gray tank, in the little space of her trapezius. Olivia tenses against him, resists like she hasn't before, and Peter sucks in a breath that's equal parts anguish and despair. He doesn't relent. He simply stays still, with his other hand warm on the curve of her hip, ring and pinky fingers splayed on the small strip of flesh that's left bare between her shirt and the waist of her sweats.

" 'Livia, you're home, you hear me?" he whispers and can't recognize his own voice, "you're _home_, and no one is going to hurt you. I'm not gonna do anything you don't want me to, so…tell me what to do?"

She relaxes, a little. As much as she can while she exhausts herself through her tears, and Peter's allowed to breath easy. Nick's moved to give him some space, weaving his legs with her own, her soles on the tops of his feet, his toes brushing Peter's calves, their foreheads pressed together, his left hand clasping hers tight in the space left from their mirrored position. Peter inhales, then exhales, all in regular patterns, his diaphragm pushing against her back as he mentally counts every little puff of air on her neck, working to lull her into following the even rhythm he plays against her spine, and steady her breath. After a while, she slides her hand onto his, presses her slim fingers in the spaces between his own and curls them down on his palm, and even if Peter weren't a genius and couldn't hear the broken, intermittent buzz of her thoughts on his own, painting fragments of surrealist pictures and leaving sensations behind, even then he'd still know the meaning of that.

_Please, please don't let go._

* * *

Sometimes, Nick envies them this.

Sure, he can see inside her head the same way he can hear himself think, and he always knows where she is, and can feel whatever she feels down to the littlest nuance (except, when you really look at it, that's not always good). There's no one closer to her than him, by all human standards and scientific parameters scribbled on charts, and yet… and yet.

It's not that he's jealous. Jealousy has no place in their little, self-contained world. It's just that he wishes that he could also offer her this measure of relief as instinctually as Peter seems to be able to do, wishes that he didn't need to rely on a drug-inflicted ability to suss out what is what for every eight of ten different moods. It's not that he's jealous. It's that in moments like this it hits him just how truly insignificant he is, how useless. How easily replaceable, even if he knows — reasonably, logically — that he's as much a vital part of them as they are of him.

He shakes the thought away. This is not about him, not today (if ever). And there _is_ one thing he can do that no one else would.

Nick closes his eyes, concentrates on his breathing. He hasn't done this in a very long time, not since before the fire, before all the terror and the chaos began. Not since before Peter entered the fray. It used to be child's play. Used to be like all secrets and codes children share and create as a way for distinction, independence and that tribal inclination that comes as natural as breathing to man. Anything she wouldn't dare say out loud she'd share this way. Nothing ever went unsaid between them, those days, and though he respects that she has boundaries now, he fears this is something he can't let her keep bottled up to fester and rot her inside. He presses his forehead tight against hers (because in the end, the contact does help), and he sees.

All memory relies on emotion. We remember events because we associate them with sensations that are always, always unique, all experiences translated into sensory input and stored in our main data base, the brain. Well, emotion is to him like light to a prism, he can dissect it, pick it apart piece by piece, read it and interpret it and rebuild. It's no different from watching the cut scenes from a film he's never seen without first knowing the plot, it's a little confusing and conjecture is a lot time consuming, but it can be done.

What he's seeing now is something like this: he only gets bits and pieces, the parts she's let herself show, to spare him or herself he'll never know. There is a room. A well lit space, with floor to ceiling windows and a city-wide view. A tall building. The room smells of fear and sweat and high priced cologne, and there is only one exit and it's just been cut off by a shut door. There are hands. Too-soft hands with short fingers, short, manicured nails. They go around her wrists, grope at her breasts, spread her legs, and they hurt. The ceiling isn't all the same white, she can see the brush strokes after she stares for a while, on her back. She won't close her eyes. The taste of blood on her mouth, like iron, like rust where she's just bit her own tongue, pain meant to distract because _she_ _will not scream. _Disgust. Faking it when the mark comes, at last, and regulating her breath to not puke right there on the bed. Anger, and nausea, and frustration. Impotence. She will not cry.

_I couldn't stop it, I let it go too far, I couldn't stop it, Nick, I needed that info, I could've killed him right then but that wasn't the mission, I couldn't stop it, I couldn't stop it._

There's something wet on his face, Nick thinks as he comes back to himself. He can't say he's surprised to find that he's crying. He's burning, and everything's burning and he finally understands just how it must be for her to set things on fire. He's shaking, but he's not the only one shaking. He looks ahead, through the tears and the heartbreak and the anger, and sees the mark's life ending in all the most painful ways, etched on Peter's contorted, tear streaked face.

Peter and him, they don't forget. She completed the mission, she's safe.

In life, accidents happen. People go missing every day, poor people, white people, black people. Important people, too. The Hudson's familiar enough with the concept that he's sure it won't mind another corpse in it's murder collection.

* * *

8

* * *

Killing someone isn't all that hard. The human body, for all it's advantages and strengths is, unsurprisingly, inherently weak. Cutting, shooting, piercing, smothering, even a strong enough punch, they're all lethal if done right…or wrong. It's not all that hard, no, and you really need no previous experience unless you'd like to avoid the mess that comes in the two-for-one pack.

Pain, now, pain is something else entirely. Pain is a sport of precision, and it takes practice. It's about making it last, pushing boundaries farther than is advisable every time, but not far enough that the body will shut down in advance of the predetermined finale. Self control is a requirement.

Good thing Peter's got reams of that.

"Please, don't do this, please, I have insurance for this sort of thing, I can double whatever they paid you, I-I - I can triple it, even." The blindfolded mark coughs out through two, maybe three cracked ribs, as he hangs by the wrists from a beam in the basement's ceiling, his toes stretching down in an effort to get some support from the rough concrete floor. He's a regular middle aged man, his hair thinning at the crown of his head, clean shaven, plump but healthy and smartly dressed (before they ripped his clothes off, that is). For all onlookers the cardboard cut-out of the New York executive.

Peter laughs, and hears Nick echoing him from the hallway as he makes his rounds, checking for unwanted guests and possible surprises. Getting a location secure and isolated enough that no one would hear the man scream had been a bit of an issue, but they'd managed rather well, all things considered. Knowing people in dark places has it's benefits when you deal in deception and death.

His knuckles are raw, his phalanges ache, and he's already started to sweat, but he's barely feeling anything other than what he's been feeling for hours. Pure, blistering rage.

They've been taking turns. Nick will go in, make the man live his worst nightmares while awake, make the panic rise to the edge of what his heart can take before easing him back down, over and over again without a flinch. Peter will take charge in a more physical fashion. It's been about three, maybe four hours. They left the house before the sun came up, Olivia sleeping as soundly as she was ever going to sleep, with Nick's help. Peter called in a couple of favors, had the man brought here with zero fuss, burrowed some tools, made some arrangements.

It's about time to spice things up.

"He looks a little tired of hanging there, don't you think?" Peter asks, his voice loud for the marks benefit.

"Hmm, a little, yeah," Nick says, in the room with him once more, "Want me to drop him?"

"Sure, why not. We can let him sit for a bit."

Nick unknots the rope with a yank, and the man falls with a yell and a thud on the ground before they both pick him up by the shoulders and shove him roughly into the janitor's rickety chair (the janitor, an elderly man, had agreed to have an extra day off after an impromptu bonus payment that would allow him to drink himself into a stupor for a couple of months).

"Thank you, thank you," he blabbers, and Peter grabs a fistful of hair and smashes his face against the desk. Something crunches, and breaks. His nose, most likely. Just as well, he won't be needing it much longer anyway.

"Don't thank me yet," he says, and yanks back, grabbing the cleaning cloth from the bucket at his feet and pushing it inside the man's mouth before taping it shut. He looks at Nick, and nods, feels the man go still as rock, paralyzed in blinding panic, his breathing as harsh as an overexerted horse's might sound. Peter goes around the table, pulling his hands to the desk's edge one by one. He picks the nail gun from the floor.

"You see," he continues, "the thing is, Doctor Larson, that we're not doing this for money. We're doing it for the sheer fucking pleasure of it. You seem to know a thing or two about that."

With that, he nails the man's hands to the table, as far apart as they'll go.

It takes a while for the screams to stop echoing in the room. They've only just started.

* * *

8

* * *

Olivia's still in bed when they make it back to the flat. It's already mid-morning, she's been awake for a while, and her head pounds, but that's the least of her afflictions. She's always been able to shut out physical pain with efficiency, but she can't ever manage to keep herself from thinking. It's a good thing she exhausted her tears, a bad thing that she cried at all. It's a weakness she can't afford.

The boys ignore her, for a little, and Olivia feels (faintly, always faintly) Peter retreat on his own to the apartment he's supposed to be sharing with Bell, — his guardian and godfather both — right above theirs, hears the shower come on in the room beside hers. It's a little strange, but she can't find it in herself to care. She can be damaged enough without help.

After a while, they show on her door, Nick leading and Peter behind, like they always do.

"Hey," Nick speaks first, sitting at the edge of the bed, putting his hand on her quilt-covered knee. He knows not to ask how she feels, knowing firsthand that it's neither pleasant nor pretty. He looks tired, they both do, water still trailing down the short-cropped ends of Nick's combed hair, and plastering Peter's unrulier curls to the base of his neck.

She responds by moving over, relaxing sore muscles back into the pillows and patting the spot where he'd been lying before. Nick immediately complies, and mirrors her shape on the bed. Olivia looks over her shoulder, fixes Peter with a stare that says nothing and speaks, "Do me a favor and stop pretending you're not gonna get into bed."

Her voice has no inflection, no emotion or intention. Peter raises an eyebrow, pushes off from the jamb and approaches. His chest is familiar against her spine, and she knows the pattern of his breathing on the back of her neck, the steady rhythm of his heart behind hers. She pretends not to flinch, does her best not to tense, takes a small breath to avoid freezing up at the feel of his body so tightly wound around her own.

"There's something we want you to see," he says, pushing a worn kraft envelope into her hands.

The envelope's not heavy, a little thick perhaps. She opens it up, finds it filled with polaroid pictures lying face down in her hands. Olivia turns them around, and she smiles.

It's the last time in a long time that she'll let herself feel a thing.


End file.
